It doesn't look like the article text there actually has any relation to all the Newtype photos on those pages, and the caption on the actual photo isn't real clear either. Presumably the original article it went with in the September 2000 issue of Newtype would have explained it. Japanese Wikipedia says it was from a Schell Bullet talk Nagano and Ikuhara Kunihiko were doing at Kadokawa Shoten's booth at Tokyo Character Show 2000, having declared it was to ward off misfortune. The citation on that is Tales of Joker 21.

So a while back I actually bought about 5 years worth of old Newtypes from a fellow throwing them out and now I actually do have the September 2000 issue of Newtype. It just says that Minako was covering for that slacker Nagano, and that Rei doesn't get enough screen time anyway. Really not much more than an extended caption among the rest of the Tokyo Character Show report.